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It’s been more than a year since Barack Obama stepped into the White House as the 44th president of these United States. His election was a historic one, not just introducing the nation’s first African-American president but also in changing the way campaigns would run from here on out.
The true genius of Obama really emerged during his campaign; no one expected their team to so artfully transform campaigning, taking it online and in turn thoroughly engaging millions of youths who would have otherwise not paid any attention to the presidential race.
Such a transformation can’t be understated. In fact, the last time someone shook up politics this much, it was 1954 and John Kennedy was introducing America to our first televised presidential debate.
In many respects, the ailing 1954 Richard Nixon is eerily reminiscent of the sickly 2008 John McCain. In both elections, it was the transformer who strongly won. How someone who was in such an envious position can now be experiencing a 51 percent approval rating might come off as a surprise to many, but in reality, is surprisingly obvious. Obama is suffering from the worst nightmare a politician can experience — he’s lost touch with the American people, his constituency. Don’t panic yet though because I still think that, no pun intended, there’s still hope that Obama can soon change.
Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer-winning author and New York Times columnist, recently compared the current state of the U.S. to a patient who just started feeling better after an intense bout in the intensive care unit. Just as he starts to slowly sit up, all the doctors around him (representing dear Washington) suddenly start fighting and throwing equipment around. The patient asks what any sane human being would: “Are you people crazy? Aren’t there any adults here?” The problem is that the patient is right; there are no adults around.
In Washington, the general absence of adults is normal and the lack of maturity is more-or-less expected. As a people, we expect our politicians to be self-serving, selfish and at times even border-line corrupt. Our everyday speech shows it and this anger and frustration is translated into numbers when we poll, as it is right now with the 111th Congress’ dismal 18 percent approval rating.
So, what really changed?
Well, we supposedly elected an outsider as our president last November. Obama, perhaps in light of his congressional inexperience, constantly campaigned by labeling himself as an outsider. He’s not a part of Washington and we just happily gobbled all that up, truly believing that our constant political disappointments might finally stop. He wooed and won the hearts, minds, and votes of millions based on his extremely social campaigning, showcasing his honest and direct messages. That’s what we need again.
If Obama should focus on just one misstep of his administration, it’s this: The president’s strengths are in taking complicated issues and boiling them down for us, or as Friedman calls it, talking to us like adults, “making us smarter rather than angrier.”
Instead of paying heed to the politically unstable Washington, forget those middlemen and deal directly with us, Mr. president. We are the true power-holders in the United States, even if it doesn’t seem so 99.9 percent of the time. The prowess you so elaborately demonstrated during the campaign should only be repeated now in your administration.
We then will be responsible for keeping those corrupt, selfish, self-serving politicians in line. After all that, if they still demand to be divisive, ignorant and useless, we can simply use said powers to end their legislative careers during their re-election. And at that time, we would be more than happy to do so.
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